Notes from SAPPHIRE 09

Yesterday at work was “catch-up day” from a week at SAPPHIRE 2009, the annual user conference for SAP. As with the JDA/Manugistics conference earlier this year, there were concerns that attendance was going to be low, because so many companies are limiting travel expense. At the conference, I did hear that attendance was only was 60% lower than last year.

Conferences like this are great opportunities for IT to do a ton of learning – about the specific technology, of course, but also about the state of mobile computing and collaboration, tools that we are apparently trying to get the rest of the business world to adopt. Experiential learning, real-world experience – always better to talk about something that you know works / doesn’t work in a practical setting. (No, I don’t suggest you replace Quicken with SAP at home, although that might be a growth area for BbD).

Twitter at a Conference

I wrote up my trip report / internal blog entry yesterday (Friday), but I was twittering a lot during some of the sessions, so it was an easy write up – I just cut-and-paste from my personal timeline. Using the Blackberry during the conference was a pretty good experience; I could take fairly detailed notes on what was being said – plus, I can throw out passing Tweets on the way. Near-real time knowledge sharing – very nice for folks in the Tweeterverse, watching the information go by.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to engage in a Tweet-versation with these client devices; the screen is too small, and you only see what you are typing. I did, however, latch on to the #sapphire09 hash tag to come up with a workable monitoring process. I found that search.twitter.com presents a decent RSS feed, one that the Blackberry browser consumes quite nicely. I don’t know if this is a “native” RSS reader in the blackberry, but it worked amazingly well – I made a passing mention of one of the sessions I attended, and someone asked for more detail – so I ended up tweeting almost every slide.

Apotheker

The Tuesday morning address by Leo Apotheker started with some doom and gloom about the economy, but that was just a lead-in to SAP’s new branding message of promoting “clarity” for the enterprise; making pertinent business information easy to access, easy to see. Some of my tweets from the speech … I clearly (sic) have a different editorial style …

Apoetheker starting with the doom and gloom #sapphire09 7:38 AM May 12th
My inner cynic is subsiding – I actually like the appeal for “clarity” #sapphire09 7:42 AM May 12th
Are “clear enterprises” like “glass houses”? (Sorry, cynic is back) #sapphire09 7:44 AM May 12th
Is he about to say sap could have prevented the economic collapse? #sapphire09 7:56 AM May 12th
Ah, just the story of how goldman sachs did ok because they actively manage risk #sapphire09 7:57 AM May 12th
We need a simple example of how a manufacturer manages risk #sapphire09 7:58 AM May 12th
SUGEN KPI Framework for enterprise support – nice focus on transparency #sapphire09 7:59 AM May 12th
Props – a pretty effective live demo of a blackberry enabled work process #sapphire09 8:03 AM May 12th
The carbon footprint app looks interesting – this is a recurring theme for recent presentations for me #sapphire09 8:17 AM May 12th
I think its a harsh. retroactive self criticism when this “speedy query” demo admits that a simple query would take ‘weeks’ #sapphire09 8:27 AM May 12th
SRO crowd at presentation for information “dashboards” – yet another recurring topic, still unmet need #sapphire09 1:11 PM May 12th
Sap guy was apparently unable to say “eat our own dogfood”, too closely related to microsoft hhh #sapphire09 1:19 PM May 12th

The most interesting areas of Leo’s conversation had to do with the metrics being created by SUGEN (not), a collection of all the national user groups (like ASUG). SAP continues to get lots of pushback from the customer base about their increased support fees, and these metrics are going to allow us all to see how SAP is performing.

Plattner

The Wednesday morning address by Hasso Plattner, one of the founders of SAP and a pretty interesting guy, started out like a technical lecture at engineering school about in-memory databases and columnar data. By the end, it had transitioned to a Business Objects demo and a tool “easy enough that a CEO can use it”. Here are some tweets from that speech …

Hasso on speed [sic] – spotlighting the reams of data and the need for decent access tools #sapphire09 7:44 AM May 13th
Hasso is very professorial – if it weren’t for the subject matter, methinks more would pass on the talk #sapphire09 7:53 AM May 13th
Ok, reading other #sapphire09 tweets now – is a shoe dropping right now? Re sap and hardware … #sapphire09 7:57 AM May 13th
Someone should register spaghettibeforecooking.com #sapphire09 7:59 AM May 13th
Maybe hasso’s point is that clarity / speed yap from yesterday is not smoke and mirrors – solid tech supporting this sales stuff #sapphire09 8:16 AM May 13th
Insert only – like the old one-write accounting systems – ledgers in pen. Make a mistake, back it out. Complete auditability #sapphire09 8:19 AM May 13th
Is insert only / read only db stuff analogous to RISC chips? Who needs elegance when you think Real Fast. #sapphire09 8:20 AM May 13th
Head-snapping shift from professor to jester #sapphire09 8:23 AM May 13th
Hasso rips on EIE processing (everything in excel) #sapphire09 8:24 AM May 13th
Oh, I think he just said he is talking about t-rex #sapphire09 8:29 AM May 13th
Hasso is definitly tech at heart, rips into classic demo style of demo on mini data set #sapphire09 8:30 AM May 13th
hasso’s enthusiasm is honest, like the literate engineer given a moment of exec management’s attention #sapphire09 8:34 AM May 13th
Awesome animated pipeline #sapphire09 8:41 AM May 13th
Boy he started slow but has he hit stride in last 10 min #sapphire09 8:43 AM May 13th
Table scans not considered harmful #sapphire09 8:48 AM May 13th

This was pretty interesting technology – high-speed, insert only databases. Not sure what that means for the long term of our existing databases, data warehouses, and hardware. But hey, it’s only capital – right?

Elsewhere On the Web

General interest / watchfulness towards the SAP strategy, as the company faces questions like technology platforms, support fees, and a new CEO …
Fortune magazine’s totally non-technical take on Leo Apotheker …
Vinnie Merchandani’s summary of show hilights, plus insights on SAP’s long-term strategy
SAP and Social Networking – I didn’t catch these presentations / conversations, but many are writing / tweeting about it …
Definite focus during the week on Business Objects … it actually looks pretty good …
Some summary comments from ZDNet …

Previously …